Meteorology

In our precision weather stations we take precise measurements every 10 minutes of the air temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, solar radiation and rainfall.

Weather station mast at the OpenLiving Lab — Mast with meteorological equipment in the OpenLiving Lab riparian woodland site.

We have masts set up in the riparian woodland and urban woodland each equipped with:

HygroVUE 10 – a digital thermometer and relative humidity sensor that records air temperature and humidity
MetSENS500 Compact Weather Sensor that records atmospheric (or barometric) pressure, wind speed and direction, air temperature and relative humidity.
WSD1 sensor with 3-cupped anemometer for measuring wind speed and wind vane for measuring wind direction.
Kalyx-RG Rain Gauge, which has an aerodynamic shape to reduce inaccuracies from wind blowing over the rim of the rain collecting cup.
Apogee Pyranometer sensors (models SP510 and SP-610) that measure global shortwave radiation. One sensor measures incoming solar radiation and another measures reflected shortwave radiation from the earth’s surface.
Apogee Quantum Sensor (Model SQ-500) to measure photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). We can think of this as the light that plants will use for photosynthesis with frequencies in the range 400 to 700 nm. This is usually measured as photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), which is the amount of photons of light in this frequency range (in micromoles) per square metre per second (μmol/m²/s).

Meterological sensors used in the OpenLiving lab — MetSENS500 weather sensor, Kalyx-RG WSD1 wind sensor, Kalyx-RG rain gauge, Apogee Quantum sensor

At the base of the mast in the riparian woodland we measure environmental data on soil temperature, water content, electrical conductivity and matric potential at depths of 10 cm and 30 cm using:

WET150 Sensors – these measure water content, temperature and electrical conductivity.
EQ3 Equitensiometer – measures soil temperature and matric potential, which is the suction required to extract water from the matrix of soil particles.

Temperature data

Between August 2025 and January 2026, air temperature peaked at 32°C and reached a minimum of 5°C. Readings were similar in the riparian and urban woodlands.

Soil temperature followed a similar pattern, peaking in late August and reaching the coldest point in mid January. Deeper soils stayed warmer with smaller fluctuations in temperature.

Rain and soil moisture

We can use the data from aerial and ground sensors to see how soil moisture at different depths is affected by precipitation. After a cold period with little or no precipitation from 22^nd December 2025, in January 2026 it snowed on the 6^th and 8^th and rained on the 15^th and 17^th January, with our sensors detecting over 1mm of precipitation on these dates.

Soil water content at 10cm rose from 43% around December 31^st to a peak of over 55% when it rained on January 15^th. Soils at this level fluctuate more in their saturation level.

Soil water content at 30cm only started to rise after the snow events on 6^th and 8^th January as the ground begain to thaw. It continued to rise to around 44% saturation as it rained more during the month.

We can see how the soils at different depths are responding to changes in the weather, storing water and helping to prevent flooding events. As vegetation changes during habitat restoration we will be able to see how this is affecting the storage capacity of our woodland and floodplain meadow soils.

Electrical conductivity and matric potential

The extent to which soil water can carry electrical current is sometimes used as an indicator of salinity as it varies depending on the composition of cations (e.g. Na⁺, Ca⁺, K⁺, NH₄⁺) and anions (e.g. SO₄^–, Cl^–, NO₃^–) from salts that are dissolved in soil water.

Both conductivity and soil matric potential (or “water suction potential”) vary depending on the soil composition, water quality, temperature and salinity.

It’s important to understand how these fluctuate with the weather when we are analysing samples from our OpenLiving Lab for soil pH and nutrient composition. Seasonal variation and fluctuations with precipitation need to be taken into account when mapping and investigating changes in soil properties across the woodland and meadow sites.

Click on the links for more details on how we are analysing pH, Phosphorus, Nitrogen and Carbon.